


i don't need to destroy you (you will do it on your own)

by shineyma



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M, Pre-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 17:36:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16581005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: Grant's been thinking about the future lately. Funnily enough, the future's been thinking about him, too.





	i don't need to destroy you (you will do it on your own)

**Author's Note:**

> ohhhhhhmygosh, you guys. You guys. *clings to fic* This gave me so much trouble, I can't even tell you.
> 
> I don't know what to say. I hope you enjoy? Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review! <3

“And the lithium tetrafluoroaluminate—are you listening?”

As Jemma turns suddenly to face him, Grant smiles—as much at the fond tone as the adorable (and very familiar) attempt to surprise him.

“To every word,” he promises.

“Really,” she says, folding her arms (and visibly fighting a smile of her own). “And how many of them did you understand?”

“Fourteen,” he replies promptly. “Or sixteen, if you count the three ‘and’s you used separately.”

Jemma manages to hold a stern frown for all of three seconds—and then she breaks, laughing, and abandons her microscope to hug him. He’s leaning back against a counter, far enough away not to accidentally disturb any science, and she pretty much just _slumps_ on top of him, trusting him to take her weight.

The slump is just as familiar as the rest of the exchange. The whole thing’s been a running joke ever since their first date, when he swung by her lab to pick her up and she lectured at him for nearly twenty minutes because she was so excited about what she’d just figured out. Her enthusiasm for her work was cute—and her appreciation for his precise, accurate answer as to how much he understood (proof that he’d actually been _listening_ ) was such that they actually had their first kiss right then and there, before they even left the lab.

Grant thought then that he might stretch out their relationship for a bit—he already liked her, and she was obviously  a woman in desperate need of some proper appreciation, so why not?

He never imagined that he might fall in love—that, three years on, he’d be having that same conversation with her and not be even a little bit bored. Yet, somehow, here he is.

Kissing her hair, he spares a minute to thank every moron who ever didn’t listen when Jemma talked. If they hadn’t been too stupid to appreciate what they had, he might not be here now.

“I’m sorry,” Jemma says, obviously unaware of the path his thoughts have taken. “I didn’t mean to go on like that when you’re about to leave. Forgive me?”

Her voice is still rich with fond amusement, and it makes something pull tight in Grant’s stomach. Nobody’s ever talked to him the way she does—no teenage fling, no Academy girlfriend, not even the most head-over-heel, stupidly devoted mark he’s ever seduced. A guy could get addicted to this kind of genuine love.

But he’s getting maudlin. (He blames it on those rings he was looking at last week.)

“No forgiveness necessary,” he says honestly. “I like it when you go on like that.”

“But we’re supposed to be spending time together,” she protests.

Grant looks down at her, taking in the complete lack of space between them, and Jemma rolls her eyes.

“You know what I mean.”

“I do,” he admits, “but really, Jem, this is good.”

In fact, it’s perfect. He loves watching Jemma in her element—loves listening to her explain her science when she’s too excited to dumb it down and hearing the pure joy in her voice as she tosses out ten-syllable words with ease. What better image of her to carry into the field with him?

…Well, okay, there’s _one_ that might be better. But he’s gotta report to the hangar in less than five minutes; not nearly long enough to show her a good time.

Even as he’s regretting that, Jemma rests her chin on his chest and pouts up at him. “How long will you be gone this time?”

“Not sure,” he admits. “I’m second string on this one—coming in to provide some relief for the initial team. It can’t be going all that well if they’re calling in back-up, so…it might be a while.”

For a second, Jemma’s pout wavers—but she’s always so determined to put on a brave face for him, it’s no surprise when it firms back up.

“Well, you had better be careful this time,” she warns. “I will _not_ be impressed if you get shot again, Grant Ward.”

“Oh yeah?” he asks, tightening his grip on her waist just a little. “And what if I do? What’re you gonna do about it?”

Jemma’s eyes narrow. She pokes him sharply in the chest.

“If you get shot,” she says direly, “there will be no sex for a _month_.”

Grant laughs. He can’t help it. “Sure there won’t.”

“I mean it this time!” she insists. “You’re too reckless, and obviously that won’t change without some consequences, so—” She nods briskly. “—no sex if you get shot.”

He’d like to keep the banter going, but even as he opens his mouth to tease her further, his watch beeps. It’s time to leave.

“Fine, then,” he says instead, and kisses her forehead. “I won’t get shot. Just for the sex.”

Balancing herself against his chest, Jemma stretches up to kiss him chastely.

“See that you don’t,” she says, very softly. “Be safe.”

“I will,” he promises, and—with one last hug—leaves her behind.

 

+++

 

Not that Jemma’d ever believe it, but Grant hasn’t survived this long in such a dangerous career without learning the value of a little caution. By this point, it’s habit to sweep every room, area, or mode of transportation he enters; in the first half-second after entering somewhere new, he counts how many people are within sight, clocks their exact positions, and draws up a plan for how to respond should they all prove violent. It barely even takes conscious thought anymore; it’s just second nature.

So he knows—he _knows_ —that this quinjet was empty when he walked up the ramp. And yet somehow, the second the ramp _thunks_ into place, there’s someone else in the cabin.

Which would be a hell of a trick even if the guy didn’t look _exactly like him_.

“What the—”

“Chill,” the imposter says, raising one hand innocently. Not all that comforting, what with how his other hand’s aiming a gun at Grant. “I come in peace.”

“Yeah, right.” Grant pushes his shock forcefully aside and makes himself focus—although he does spare a second to be grateful for the instinct that had him drawing his own gun before he registered the whole identical twin thing. “Who are you and what do you want?”

“I’m you, dumbass.”

To that, Grant lets his expression speak for itself.

“Oh, for—” The imposter rolls his eyes, looking for all the world like this is just one huge inconvenience—like _Grant’s_ the one who stole _his_ face and dropped in on _his_ quinjet. “Jessica Perello.”

Grant manages to contain his reaction, but just barely. He wasn’t expecting that. “Never heard of her.”

“Sure you have,” the…other him(? Really? Grant’s never told anyone about Jessica, and it’s not like _she’d_ have the means to send someone into the heart of SHIELD to impersonate him, even if she for some reason decided to, but still. It’s hard to believe) says. “Remember? That first year in the woods? I ran into Jessica on a trail I thought was abandoned, sold her on some story about camping with my survivalist uncle. She was hot and I was lonely, so I put the moves on her.” He smiles, a little fondly. “She taught me a lot.”

All very true, but… “She could’ve told you that.”

“Sure,” he acknowledges. “But what Jessica never knew was that those lessons saved my life just a few months later.”

Grant’s heart skips a beat. No way. No _way_.

“Yeah? And how’s that?”

“I think you know,” his double says. “That blizzard? It was so fucking cold and you were so fucking desperate to get indoors that you seduced that writer staying on the edge of the lake. Spent three weeks sleeping in her bed, trying out all kinds of weird kinks to help _inspire_ her—and when she left, you moved on to the next woman, and then the next. You didn’t sleep outside again until spring.”

Yeah. Okay.

Wow.

Nobody else knows that whole story. _Nobody_. Jessica knows her part, but none of the women he spent the winter with knew that he was avoiding anything other than a tense family situation. They sure as hell didn’t know he was saving his own life by playing vacation fling for them.

So. Either this guy’s a mind reader, or…

“Okay,” he says, and slowly lowers his gun. “So you’re me. That still leaves the question of what the hell you want.”

His double smiles grimly. “Just call me the Ghost of Christmas fucking Future.”

On the last word, his raised hand drops, and just like that, Grant’s vision goes grey, his stomach turns inside out, and his knees turn to Jell-O.

 

+++

 

When he can see again, he’s flat on his back.

“What,” he wheezes, “the fuck.”

“Yeah,” the other him says from somewhere above him, “takes a lot out of you. Sorry.”

He doesn’t _sound_ it…and that didn’t answer Grant’s question. He pushes himself up, intending to ask again—but his train of thought is pretty spectacularly derailed by his surroundings.

This…is not a quinjet.

“Where are we?” he asks.

“My office,” the other him says, discarding some weird…glowy box thing on the huge, mahogany desk. ( _His_ desk? Really?) “But what you should’ve asked was _when_.”

Grant doesn’t like the sound of that. Not one bit. “When, then?”

“2018,” the other him says. “Welcome to the future.”

Grant takes his time standing up, using it as a handy excuse to stall as he absorbs that. His first impulse is to ask _why the fuck he’s been brought to the future_ —but thinking about it, he already knows, doesn’t he? His double called himself the ghost of Christmas Future, which implies there’s something here in 2018 that he wants to show his past self.

“Okay,” he says, and makes a show of brushing himself off. “And what am I here to see?”

For the first time, his future self’s mask of unconcern slips, and just for a second, he looks—

Grant doesn’t know what to call it. All he knows is that he doesn’t like it one bit.

“Consequences,” is the answer he gets after a long, long minute. “Come on.”

It’s a short trip: just through a door off to the left is a huge, well-decorated ( _too_ well; it’s like something out of freaking Homes & Gardens) sitting room, and on the other side of _that_ is a door that leads into a bedroom.

Maybe the bedroom is creepily perfect, too, but if it is, Grant doesn’t notice. He’s way more focused on Jemma—and on the sudden surge of fury the sight of her provokes.

She looks awful. Pale, gaunt, curled around a pillow with a horribly blank look on her face—not that the blankness can hide the fact that she’s obviously been crying recently. Her eyes are red and swollen, her cheeks are wet, and there’s a certain element to her slow, steady breathing that reminds him of the breakdown she had that time SHIELD prematurely declared him KIA.

“What happened?” he asks, and barely recognizes his own voice.

He doesn’t get an answer, but the question draws Jemma’s attention. She _was_ just staring at the wall; now her eyes slide to him and his future self behind him, and—

This is worse.

For a second there, he didn’t think anything _could_ be, but…yeah. Way worse than that blank-but-shattered look is this total non-reaction to there suddenly being two of him.

Well, not _non_ -reaction—there’s some clear surprise—but there’s no _curiosity_. She’s not intrigued, not full of interest and questions and demands. She obviously didn’t know his future self was about to pop back into the past for a visit, and yet she’s not moved to ask how or why there’s another him here. She just…stares at them for a few seconds and then curls tighter around her pillow.

It’s not just that she looks miserable (although she does, and it kills him). It’s that she looks…empty. Broken. Like someone dug all her spark right out of her.

Grant’s never seen her like this before. He wishes he still hadn’t.

“Jemma,” he starts, taking a jerky and totally unplanned step forward—and Jemma flinches.

Grant freezes.

“Baby,” the other him says, and she flinches even harder. “Why don’t you go check on Charlie? She’s missed you lately.”

Something passes over Jemma’s face—a horrible, chilling kind of despair—before, slowly, she sits up.

“Okay,” she says in a dull tone that stabs at him.

There’s another door on the far wall, and it’s to that Jemma shuffles. It’s not a _long_ walk, but she’s moving slowly, and Grant’s eyes have plenty of time to trace the defeated slump to her shoulders. She’s practically slouching.

He’s still frozen in place, caught in the horrible moment when she _flinched_ (at her name? or, worse, at his approach?), but the _click_ of the door closing behind her—cutting off the sight of her, defeated and empty and _hurting_ —finally helps him shake it off.

Immediately, he whirls on his future self. “What. Happened.”

“The uprising,” the future Grant says simply—but he can’t hide the guilt on his face. Anyone else might miss it, but Grant _knows_ what he looks like when he’s being haunted by something.

He’s _ashamed_. That son of a bitch.

Before he even knows he means to move, he’s fisted his hands in the other him’s shirt and slammed him into the wall.

The other him doesn’t even _try_ to stop it. That says a hell of a lot.

“What did you _do_?” Grant demands.

Apparently not ashamed enough to _not_ defend himself, the other him snarls back, “The same damn thing you would’ve.”

“The hell I—”

“She shut me out,” the future Grant snaps. “The second she found out I was Hydra, she threw her wedding ring in my face and started insisting that we weren’t married—that she’d given her vows to a lie and it _didn’t count_.”

That news—that they were _married_ , that Jemma had a _ring_ —would’ve made his year in any other circumstances. Here and now, with this other him bristling in defensive guilt—with the image of Jemma’s empty despair still at the front of his mind—it only makes his heart sink.

“What did you do?” he asks again, with much less force. He obviously _needs_ to know, but he’s really damn sure that he doesn’t _want_ to.

There’s no doubt now they’re the same person; the other Grant deflates the same way he just did.

“I thought I could win her over,” he says quietly. “I thought if she just had some time, if I could just get her to _see_ , she’d understand.”

“But it didn’t work.”

The other him huffs a totally unamused laugh. “She just kept _hating_ me. Calling me a Nazi, trying to escape—it was obvious we weren’t gonna get anywhere while she was still so angry.”

The thought of Jemma hating him—yeah. That hurts. It _aches_ , even, with an intensity Grant wouldn’t have expected.

But over what he just saw? He’d take hatred any day.

“And this is _better_?” he demands.

“Of course not,” the other him bites out. “I didn’t mean to—I went too far, all right? I thought I could just undermine her morals a bit, shift her loyalties, but it kept _not_ _working_ and I pushed too hard and she _broke_.”

“Pushed too hard?” Grant really doesn’t like the sound of that.

“I used every trick in the book.” Grant’s familiar with his own expressions, has spent plenty of time emoting in a mirror while learning to control his reactions, but it’s still weird to see his own jaw shift and tense like that. “None of it worked individually, but all of it together—it was too much. I hurt her. And then…”

“And then?” he prompts, more than a little reluctantly. He doesn’t wanna know. He really, really doesn’t wanna know.

“That last year before the uprising, there was this—this team,” the other him says. “Jemma made friends with a civilian consultant, a hacker. They got close fast; one day I turned around and they were like sisters.”

What does that have to do with anything? “Okay…?”

“Three months ago,” he continues, “the hacker broke in here to rescue Jemma.”

Oh shit. “Tell me you didn’t.”

“She almost managed it,” the other him says, ignoring the interruption. “They were so close—not even ten feet from Skye’s quinjet when I caught up to them.” He cracks his neck, but Grant can see through the mask of unconcern, can read his own nausea in the set of his future self’s mouth. “I lost my temper.”

“You killed her.”

Killed a woman he just described as like Jemma’s _sister_ —a woman who risked and then _lost_ her own life trying to save Jemma. And not only that, killed her right in _front_ of Jemma.

Yeah. The empty look, the tears…even the flinch makes sense now.

“I was about to lose my wife and daughter,” the other him defends weakly, which—

What. _What_.

“Daughter?” Grant demands, and his other self looks even guiltier. (Not to an outside observer, maybe, but to Grant himself? Yeah. There’s guilt and regret plastered all over that face.)

“I told you I used every trick in the book,” he reminds him, and that—that is just—

Grant’s legs can’t support him anymore. He finally lets go of the other him’s shirt, stumbles back, and sits heavily on the edge of the bed.

He got Jemma pregnant just to _manipulate_ her. Did he even—was it—? He said Jemma _hated_ him, which suggests she wouldn’t be in any hurry to have sex with him, so did—did he—?

Just the _possibility_ is so awful that he can’t even think it. He wants to believe—he _does_ believe—that he’d never, that even desperate to keep Jemma, he’d never go that far. But he also believes he’d never break Jemma, and this him did that. Kept her prisoner, killed a woman who was like a sister to her, who came to save her (save her from _him_ ), played her like a _mark_ —

“John died in the uprising,” the other him offers weakly, like it’s some kind of defense.

It should be a blow—and it is. But stacked up against the fact of everything he’s done to Jemma, it’s a small one.

“I couldn’t lose Jemma after that,” he continues. “I crossed…a lot of lines. I know that. I admit it. But I—I couldn’t lose her.”

…Is this how Thomas felt? That morning, the day Grant left for military school, when he tried one last time to get Thomas to _understand_ and Thomas just gave him that miserable look and begged him to stop?

This lump in his throat, the tightness in his chest like his lungs are trying to suffocate him, this _horror_ as the other him gives rambling, _pointless_ excuses like any of it could possibly justify what he’s done—is this what Thomas felt?

“Stop,” Grant says—chokes, really—and the other him finally does. “Why am I here?”

For a second there, he thought nothing could be worse than that half-shamed, half-defensive look he was wearing. The desperation that takes over his expression now proves him wrong.

“To fix it,” the other him says, with a feverish kind of intensity that raises the hair on Grant’s arms. “You aren’t married yet—you’re not even engaged. You have time to—to show her, to tell Jemma the truth before you’re married.”

…What?

“Before we’re married,” he echoes—pointedly, hoping that _hearing_ it will clue his future self in to how fucking ridiculous that is.

Apparently not; the other him just nods, like he’s pleased Grant understands.

And Grant _does_ understand. Better than he wants to, really.

He understands that this him is way too far down this road to realize what Grant just did—that his future self will never, ever get that it was more than the _timing_ of his little “win Jemma over to Hydra” plan that went wrong. He’s fixated on the tiny detail—Jemma being angry that she married a lie—because he can’t face the real, big truth: that this is all his fault. That he made the wrong fucking choice.

“You can, right?” the other him asks, more than a little desperately. As disgusted as he is by all of this, Grant can’t help a tiny part of him that’s proud of his own acting ability; he had no idea, when this him first showed up on the quinjet, just how totally out of control he was. “You can fix it?”

“Yeah,” Grant says. It comes out thick and hoarse; he clears his throat and tries again. “Yeah. I can fix it.”

He has to look away from the twisted relief on his own face, and finds himself looking over his shoulder at the door Jemma left through. He’s tempted, briefly, to follow her—because he’s realized that ‘Charlie’ must be their daughter, and he wants to see her, to lay eyes on the little girl that might never come to exist once he fixes things—but he pushes the urge aside.

Jemma deserves as much space from him as she can get.

“Okay,” he says, and forces himself to face the future him again. He pushes to his feet. “Send me back to my time, and I’ll fix everything.”

 

+++

 

The trip back is just as horrible as the trip forward was, but Grant has to admit to being pleased when his vision finally clears to reveal he’s surrounded by science agents.

“What the _fuck_ ,” one of them sputters. “What did—where did you _come_ from?”

“More importantly, where did you go?” another asks. “You disappeared hours ago!”

“Good,” Grant says, and stands. All to the better that there’s evidence he went somewhere; it’ll help sell his story. “I need to talk to Fury.”

“Um,” the first agent says. “I don’t think—”

Grant pins him with a glare. “ _Now_.”

“Yes, sir,” the second agent squeaks.

Of course, it’s not quite _that_ easy—there are medical checks to make sure he’s not dying or infected with something or carrying a bomb or whatever, and then there’s transport to the Triskelion and _more_ medical checks and a long interrogation by a very suspicious Maria Hill—but within six hours, he’s sitting in Fury’s office in front of the man himself.

“So, Agent Ward,” Fury says, steepling his fingers. “You disappeared off a secure quinjet in the middle of a secure SHIELD base, reappeared under the noses of some of our best investigative agents two hours later, and immediately demanded to speak to me. I have to admit, you have my attention.”

“Good,” Grant says, leaning forward. “Because you really need to hear this.”

“I’m all ears,” Fury says dryly. “Where did you go?”

“To Hydra,” he says, and lets that stand by itself.

Fury, wily old bastard that he is, doesn’t even blink. “You went back to the forties? See Captain America while you were there?”

“No,” Grant says. “I went _forward_. To 2018.”

 _That_ gets a reaction.

“Hydra’s gone, Ward,” Fury says.

“No,” Grant says, “it’s not. And if we don’t act fast, it’ll take over within the decade.”

Fury absorbs that for a long second, then nods and sits forward. “All right. Tell me what you know.”

Grant’s been Hydra since he was a stupid kid who’d never even heard of it. He knows a _lot_. Couching the important stuff in terms of what he might’ve seen in a heavily altered future, tricking Fury into buying the load of bullshit he’s about to sell him—that’s gonna be a challenge. But Grant’s one of the best. He can do this.

He _has_ to do this, because he understands what that other, stupid, self-deluding him never could: that his mistake wasn’t waiting until after the uprising to tell Jemma he was Hydra. It was being Hydra at all.

Consciously or not, that other him chose Hydra over Jemma—over his _wife_.

Grant isn’t about to make the same mistake. That Jemma he saw in the future—broken, empty, _abused_ (abused by _him_ )—she can’t ever exist. Not in any form. And if he’s any judge, the best way to prevent everything that happened to her is by burning Hydra to the ground before she ever learns it lasted past World War II.

John won’t be happy—a _lot_ of people won’t be happy. Grant knows he’s painting a huge target on his back here. If word about his little betrayal gets out (always a possibility; there are ears everywhere), he might just burn right alongside Hydra.

But he can take it. He’s more than willing to risk it.

If that’s what it takes to protect Jemma…he’ll light the match himself.


End file.
